“Eye of the Tiger” fan Tommy Belesis is taking his licks from the brokerage industry regulator, just as The Post reported in February. (Barry Wetcher)
This one won’t end up on the Tommy Belesis family highlights reel.
The embattled Wall Street executive’s John Thomas Financial brokerage was charged yesterday with defrauding customers and threatening its brokers — at times with physical retribution — for bucking his system.
The 6-year-old firm sold its shares of a skyrocketing stock while putting client sell orders to the side, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, said in a lawsuit yesterday.
It was the second regulatory action filed against Belesis’ JTF in as many months.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, on March 22, charged Belesis and a Houston radio host with defrauding investors in a hedge fund.
Belesis has denied the SEC charges.
The lawsuits are quite a comedown for the 38-year-old Wall Street standout, who had a cameo in Oliver Stone’s 2010 “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” and was a frequent guest on cable-TV business networks.
Belesis, a Republican fundraiser, has been honored several times by New York’s GOP leaders as “Businessman Man of the Year.”
A spokesman for Belesis didn’t return a request for comment on the Finra suit.
In the complaint, Belesis and other JTF staffers are charged with conspiring to profit off the backs of investors during a one-day, 600-percent run-up in the price of America West Resources, a tiny Salt Lake City-based coal company.
On Feb. 23, 2012, Belesis blocked the firm’s brokers from selling investors’ shares of AWR while helping to unload the firm’s shares for a sweet $1 million profit, the suit charges.
Belesis was also charged with intimidating and harassing brokers who questioned him or tried to leave the firm.
He threatened to run over one broker “in the street” because the broker complained about the quality of the people being brought in to give investment presentations, according to the complaint.
The watchdog said Belesis also threatened to improperly mark up brokers’ licenses to undermine their ability to get another job.
Upon firing another broker, Belesis screamed: “F–k you, you’re done in this business, you’re done in this business, get the f–k out of here,” the complaint said.
The same broker was then “shoved” by Ron Cantalupo, JTF’s regional managing director, and then escorted out of the firm’s offices.
Belesis, with his muscular build and bald head, fancied himself on Wall Street like a boxer getting ready for a bout, sources said.
He is “obsessed” with “Eye of the Tiger” — the 1982 song by Survivor that was also the theme song to “Rocky III” — and the original “Rocky” theme song. He has used them to pump himself up for work, sources added.
Belesis has been known to blast the songs in his chauffeur-driven SUV on the way to work — and to play them loudly through the firm’s intercom system to motivate the brokers ahead of morning meetings, sources said.